Two-hundred Ukrainian civilians who on Monday graduated from their five-week-long basic military training at Toledo’s Infantry Academy will now be heading off to fight.
The 200 graduated Ukrainian soldiers, former civilians recruited from different parts of Ukraine and with an average age of 36 years old, have been trained on basic shooting, explosives, and first aid skills during intense 10-hour-long sessions for six days a week, ElPeriódico reports.
“You are now part of the Spanish armed forces family,” Robles said during the graduation ceremony. “Spain feels deeply united with Ukraine. Your cause is our cause too. You work and fight for peace, for freedom, for your country.”
“You know that you are going to a difficult place, to a difficult destination, but it is your homeland. Every time you look at this diploma, know that your pain is our pain, and your families and your children are also our families and our children”, Robles emphasised.
With these 200 new graduates, Spain reached 639 soldiers trained under the European Union Military Assistance Mission Ukraine scheme (EUMAN UA), launched in October 2022 to offer training modules to Ukrainian soldiers on EU soil and provide military equipment to the Ukrainian army.
This amount will rise to 856 in April, and EUMAN UA projects that Spain will reach 2000 trained Ukrainian soldiers by the end of the year.
During the ceremony, the battalion’s chief took the chance to thank Spain “on behalf of the whole of Ukraine” for the “help, preoccupation and attention”, and reminded them they are fighting “not only for Ukraine but for human values and for all peoples”.
(Max Griera | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
